Timo S. Paananen has written a brief piece which takes the methods that Francis Watson and others have used to argue for the inauthenticity of the papyrus fragment known as the “Gospel of Jesus’ Wife,” and applies them to a fragment of known provenance and authenticity. I hope it will be widely read and circulated, [Read More...]

More and more people, including scholars, seem to be increasingly confident that the Coptic papyrus fragment referred to as the “Gospel of Jesus’ Wife” is a modern forgery or fake. See for instance the blog post by Alin Suciu and Hugo Lundhaug. Craig Evans is among those saying that the Harvard Theological Review has decided not [Read More...]

Discussion of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife continues full speed ahead on scholarly blogs, and on list-servs such as that dedicated to the Gospel of Thomas. All of this is fantastic to see. There have been ongoing discussions about open access to scholarly publications. But I think it is also wonderful when not merely the fruits [Read More...]

Steve Douglas kindly made and shared this image: The words are something I said in my previous blog post, in response to Francis Watson’s claim that various phrases show dependence on other Gospels. There are a great many phrases one will encounter in a language which will only seem derivative of a specific other text [Read More...]

Let me start with the news that Mark Goodacre shared a pdf of an article written by Francis Watson, arguing that the recently-found Coptic papyrus that has been dubbed the “Gospel of Jesus’ Wife” is a fake. He followed that up with a second shorter pdf on the forger’s alleged technique. Some are already pronouncing [Read More...]

The new #1 Biblioblogger is fellow Patheos blogger Scot McKnight’s blog Jesus Creed. Congratulations to Scot and RJS who also blogs there occionally. Exploring Our Matrix came in at #3. Thank you, as always, to all of this blog’s readers and commenters! Several Bibliobloggers have been active in editing the Wikipedia entry about the fake [Read More...]

Tom Verenna made the video above, with input from a variety of scholars and bloggers. It sums up nicely the reasons for concluding that the lead books supposedly found in Jordan are in fact fakes. [Read more...]

I began this post wanting to share the news that the forger of the lead codices has admitted that they are fakes – but David Elkington is claiming that his are real. See Steve Caruso’s, Joel Watts’, Jim Davila’s and Tom Verenna’s posts on the subject for all the details. Elsewhere in the skeptical blogosphere, Joe Felsenstein [Read More...]